The XML Spreadsheet

Excel can save data in spreadsheets format in XML. When a workbook is saved Excel saves it as XMLSS automatically which means Extensible markup language spread sheet. Some objects remain an exception as they cannot be integrated into the XML spreadsheet like charts, ole objects, drawing objects. Even multisheet XML spread sheets can be created in XMLSS.

HTML or Hypertext markup language is the most ideal file which can display the excel table in a user friendly way. Excel Html can get a lot more complex than it actually looks. But some of the useful features of implementing XML in excel are

• Information can be completely mapped through excel spreadsheets and XML components.
• It can open a non excel and non spread sheet component using XML
• Flattening the XML file
• Opening a formatted XML sheet using XSL for viewing in HTML
• Can also open hand written XML sheets
• It can also publish data from a XML file to XML spreadsheet
• Copy and paste data from Excel to spreadsheet component 
• Using the query table from XML in Excel

The XML web services enabled excel spread sheet is not considered to be ordinary. These sheets can use the Universal description discovery and integration or UDDI to find information on companies and they also use a service called web catalog to find business profiles and product information.

Another feature that can be discussed here is transforming the XML files using the XSL while transporting them to excel spread sheets. We already know that Microsoft Excel can save and load extensible markup language files by using a spread sheet called extensive mark up language spread sheets or XMLSS. The XMLSS format is common to the XML and as well as Microsoft Excel and for that matter the Microsoft office environment.

The main function of XML remains that it is a markup language that is used to describing structured data so that various applications can read it and access it. This kind of data interchange provides many opportunities for organizations. This also presents a challenge for the excel sheets. Manipulating the elements within a XML document any number of dimensions can be created in a document. This feature can create some confusions for the excel sheet.

To solve this kind of ambiguity the excel sheet when it imports data or opens a XML data file it looks for an element which points to the XSLT file and uses that to format the XML sheet and flatten it out. The XSLT uses both the HTML and the template elements to format and restructure the available data into an output file. The template rules start functioning when the pattern rules in the XML input data file matches the data pattern in the template of the output file. These templates also carry the information about the parent and child elements present in the document and they use XPath for this.

Xpath itself is a language that is used to identify some parts of the XML document and it has been designed to be used with the XSLT. However the expressions in Xpath just identify the elements and navigate them along the data tree so that the XSLT can process the instructions.

Prolog is the first section of the XSL sheet which is used to declare the first template instruction and the initial section of the style sheet. It understands that the XSL and XSLT are a part of XML and they use XML instructions so the first or the initial statement that is made in the template is an XML statement so that it can be identified.  However conditional instructions by the programmer can further allow you to filter and process the data.

First Page: Using XML with Microsoft Excel